Beverly Billingsly Borrows a Book
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 9780152025106 (hardcover)
Price: $6.00
ISBN: 9780152058036 (paperback)
Grade level: K-3
"In this sympathetic tale of a budding bibliophile, a light-gray animal
with bearish ears and a tentative manner receives her first library card and
uses it to borrow a volume on dinosaurs. She smiles politely as the green, birdlike
librarian tells her the due date. "On Wednesday, after school, she studied the
iguanodon. On Thursday and Friday, she read about the ankylosaurus. She spent
several days building a prehistoric jungle habitat," then realizes the book
is overdue. Fearful of a fine (or jail, according to a coyote-like schoolmate),
she avoids the library until her mother discovers the problem and helps her
return the overdue book. The beaky librarian lets it slide. In his picture-book
debut, Stadler shows that a minor issue can loom large for a child (the heroine,
sporting pajamas with the due date stamped all over them, has a nightmare starring
a green triceratops with a hairdo much like the librarian's demanding the book)."
Publishers Weekly